


Four Chances

by inkdust



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Daniel is too good for this world, F/M, Fluff, Jack Thompson (barely), Peggy struggles with feelings, Peggy's POV, they live happily ever after, though somehow it turned serious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8709004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkdust/pseuds/inkdust
Summary: It might have happened like this.





	

If Peggy Carter had met Daniel Sousa on Christmas Eve 1944, it might have happened like this.

“Terribly kind of you to stop by, ma’am. So many people kept from their families this year.”

Peggy pulled her gaze from the garland someone had hung around a doorframe to follow the orderly down the hall. “Yes, I am as well.”

It was truthful, whether she meant the ticket she’d not purchased to Hampstead or the 107th, fighting somewhere in the Ardennes. She had nearly bought that ticket three times, but under all her excuses—assisting the colonel, remaining at base if Captain Rogers made contact, not wasting the bloody train fare—she only had to remember the disappointment on her mother’s face. No, she could not go home. Not yet.

“Misery loves company, eh?” The orderly chuckled before he seemed to realize himself. “Er. Ma’am.”

Peggy shook her head to put him at ease. “You’re quite right.”

She couldn’t truly say what had brought her here, only that the idea had drifted into her mind as she sat at her desk listening to the others fussing over a bottle of champagne. She wouldn’t have turned down a good whiskey, had there been any to be had, but the pop of a cork did little to improve the mood around the base. So far, the hospital was cheerier, in fact.

“Maynard—” a nurse stuck her head out of one of the rooms “—would you call Doctor Porter? I don't like the look of this swelling.”

The orderly nodded, throwing Peggy an apologetic look. “Hate to keep you waiting, ma’am—if you take a right down the next hall, the day room will be at the end.”

“The men on this hall won’t be joining in this evening?” Peggy asked the nurse before she disappeared into the room again.

“Can’t,” the nurse called back. “For one reason or another.”

Peggy glanced across the hall toward the opposite room and found a pair of eyes looking back at her. “Oh,” she said in surprise.

The man blinked slowly, the dull pull of morphine visible on his face. Stepping closer to the doorway, Peggy bit her lip when she caught sight of the bandages. The surgery must have been recent.

She checked the name posted at the door and leaned into the room. “Are you in pain, Lieutenant? I’ve a nurse just here.” She moved back to call the woman, but the lieutenant shook his head, the slightest motion of his chin.

Peggy let her gaze travel ever so briefly back to his leg, not wanting to seem rude. “Bastogne?” she asked softly, hardly daring to hope.

His mouth shaped the word in a slow, silent echo before it registered. He nodded.

She pressed her lips together hard, startled by a sudden swell of feeling. “They got you out.”

They hadn’t heard from Steve since the siege had begun, and they didn’t expect to hear word until it was cleared. But this—this was hope.

“Lieutenant Sousa, how are you feeling this evening?” The nurse bustled in, and Peggy stepped back with a murmured apology. “We’re still working to put you on the next plane to New York.”

An American soldier. Peggy smiled, sending him one last glance. “Merry Christmas, Lieutenant.”

-

She might have thought of him later, of quiet dark eyes and a long road ahead. She might have remembered his name.

Something with an S.

-

If Peggy Carter had met Daniel Sousa on Christmas Eve 1945, it might have happened like this.

“So they’ve put you to work tonight as well, have they?” she asked as she hung up her coat. The warmth of the office made her shiver.

Agent Sousa returned her wry smile. “Seems like it.”

“Well, misery loves company.” She quirked an eyebrow, pleased when it made him chuckle.

She hadn’t intended to like him, when he first walked through the door in September. It was easier to bear the _doll_ and _sweetheart_ and _milk, no sugar_ if she could lump the agents all in together. And she would have to admit, if pressed, that she had watched him rather warily, waiting for him to settle in to the office, waiting for the courtesy to drop. But it hadn’t done.

Nor was it courtesy, truthfully. Most of the agents addressed her politely, with a few notable exceptions. From Agent Sousa she felt something that reminded her more of the war.

She had wondered privately whether it might have something to do with his leg—if he felt like he was still facing a battle. If he recognized the same in her.

Despite the tedium of the night shift, Peggy welcomed the quiet tonight. She and Agent Sousa worked in silence, their desk lamps casting twin halos of light. It felt oddly peaceful.

“Not quite what I had imagined,” Peggy said before she realized she’d spoken aloud. But in front of her, Agent Sousa lifted his head, so she went on. “When we all spoke of Christmas after the war.”

Agent Sousa hummed, his pen moving again. “I always thought there would be less paperwork.”

“But still _some_ paperwork.”

He laughed under his breath. “Gotta be realistic.”

“Where were you last year, then?” Peggy asked, shuffling the papers in front of her. “At Christmas.”

His pen stilled, but he didn’t turn in his chair. There was a pause before he answered. “Paris, I guess. Then a plane to New York.”

“Oh—” It was startled out of her unbidden. A year. It had only been a year for him. “I see.”

“What about you?”

“London.” Peggy reached for her cup of tea only to remember she hadn’t got one yet. “It was…quiet,” she added as she rose from her desk. Stretching her legs would do her good. “Would you rather coffee or cocoa at the moment?”

Agent Sousa twisted to look at her, his eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Or…neither?” she said slowly, attempting to read his face. “If you are opposed?”

He blinked. “Oh. No—coffee. Coffee would be great.”

Peggy listened to the clack of his typewriter as she confronted the office stock of tea. This was certainly not London. _This or nothing,_ she thought to herself. They had offered her a place in New York. So here she was.

She noticed the typewriter had halted when a different sort of clack approached the kitchen.

“You haven’t spotted a blue tea tin by chance, have you?” she asked Agent Sousa. “Mine has been…misplaced.”

“Misplaced?”

“Seems a kinder thing to say than, ‘I believe Agent Thompson pilfered it.’”

He frowned. “Thompson doesn’t drink tea.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Agent Sousa’s frown deepened, and Peggy’s heart twisted a little. That care for fairness and justice was too familiar, and found in such short supply. She wondered if Daniel Sousa had any idea how unexpected he was.

She cleared her throat. “Coffee’s about done.”

He hurried to pour it himself. “Thank you. Really.”

She had caught him off guard, she realized. Unsure of exactly how, but her pride wasn’t over-particular. She hid her smile behind her cup.

“Good lord,” she sputtered at the first sip, setting the tea back on the counter with a clatter. “That is vile.”

“That bad?”

She made a face. “That bad.”

“All right.” Agent Sousa wheeled around and headed for Thompson’s desk. “We’re gonna find yours.”

Peggy laughed in surprise. “Right now?”

“It _is_ Christmas, Agent Carter.”

-

They might have found it. Stashed behind a stack of folders and a spare tie, they might have found it.

Or, in the end, it might not have mattered.

-

If Peggy Carter had met Daniel Sousa on Christmas Eve 1946, it might have happened like this.

She closed the office door behind her, dampening the noise of the party. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”

Daniel was standing by the window, silhouetted against the city lights. He didn’t reply at first, but when he turned she caught the flash of his smile. “Should’ve known you’d find me.”

“You weren’t hiding, were you?”

“From you?” He scoffed softly, but the question hung in the air.

He turned back to the window, and she didn’t move from the door, wondering if she should go. If she could stomach the rest of the party. Silently she measured the distance between them—the breadth of a room, the breadth of a country.

“If I have to laugh at one more witty comment about surfing at Christmas.”

Peggy looked up. Daniel’s shoulders were tense, his grip shifting on his crutch, but he didn’t move away when she crossed the room to his right side. “You won’t come home next year for Christmas?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” His voice just carried across the space between them. “I don’t know anything yet.”

She hadn’t questioned why he had accepted the offer. A promotion, his own bureau to build from the ground up. Peggy would have taken it in a heartbeat. Except—

She looked out at the city, the faces of the buildings that had grown so familiar. She had never intended to form any attachment to New York. It had simply happened.

“Not quite what I had imagined,” Daniel murmured.

Peggy glanced at him. “California?”

He smiled a little. “Life.”

She followed his gaze down to the lighted streets. “No. I suppose it isn’t.” She gave a laugh. “I imagined I would be slaying dragons.”

Daniel looked at her then, with an expression she couldn’t read. “Aren’t you?”

The door swung open, and Thompson strolled in, humming to himself. He switched on the lamp and made a satisfying yelp at the sight of them. “You trying to give a man a heart attack? Why were you in the dark?”

“Better to see the lights outside,” Peggy answered, before he could notice his own wording and twist it into a wisecrack.

Thompson turned to the window and cocked his head. “Huh. Look at that.” He rummaged around on the desk until he found whatever it was he needed. “Don’t sneak out of here, Sousa,” he added, pointing a pen in Daniel’s direction.

Daniel opened his mouth to reply, but Thompson had already gone again.

“He knows you,” Peggy noted.

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately.”

“But I believe we know him better.” Struck by sudden inspiration, she slipped around the desk and pulled a pin from her hair.

“Are you…?”

The drawer clicked open. “There we are.” She came up with a bottle and two glasses.

He shook his head. “Straight for the good stuff, huh?”

“Now you’re getting the idea.” Peggy lifted the stopper. “I thought we might…” She faltered. _Might have that drink._ The words were simple. The hardest words were always simple.

_Don’t leave things like this._

Simple. Impossible.

“Peggy?”

She shook herself and grasped for a smile. “I don’t believe I’ve said proper congratulations. No one is more deserving.”

Daniel ducked his head, watching her pour the whiskey. “I told them they should give it to you.”

The bottom of the bottle clunked against the desk as her hand slipped. She looked up sharply. “Daniel.”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “They needed to hear it.”

Their eyes met. _They needed to hear it._ Even if it changed nothing. Even if nothing could.

But when it came to this, Peggy Carter was a coward.

Laughter rose in the bullpen, and the moment broke. She offered Daniel a glass. “Perhaps one day they’ll grow ears that work properly.”

He huffed a laugh. “You’ll have left them all behind before then.”

Their glasses clinked gently, glinting in the lamplight. Peggy studied his face. “You truly believe that.” A question, though it didn’t sound like one.

“Yeah. I believe that.” The corner of his mouth curled. “Dragons, remember?”

-

Later, she might have remembered those as the words that felt like _goodbye_.

Later, much later, she might have learned they were something else altogether.

-

If Peggy Carter met Daniel Sousa on Christmas Eve 1947, it might happen something like this.

The rapping on her window nearly made her jump out of her skin.

“Daniel?” she called out, uselessly, as she hauled herself out of the bath and reached for her robe. Knowing her luck tonight, she would likely pull back the window curtain to find Bernard ogling her with a beady yellow eye. Fortune certainly hadn’t been on her side when that would-be Mafioso had taken a flying leap into a trash heap.

It was Christmas, for God’s sake.

So perhaps she had lost track of time scrubbing the rubbish out of her hair. But they’d already missed their evening plans entirely, and she would expect Daniel to come fetch her if he found himself waiting in the foyer. There was no reason for him to be tapping at her window like Romeo—though the thought did make her smile rather doltishly.

Yet there he was, shivering a little, clean wet hair curling over his forehead. He had avoided the actual trash heap, but anyone who set foot in that alley exited with a strong urge for a bath. Peggy laid down her gun and unlatched the window. “Daniel, what on earth—”

“Didn’t really feel like making an appearance at Stark’s party.”

“Oh, right. I’d forgotten.” Peggy could barely hear the music drifting from the main part of the house. She tugged at his open collar. “They might consider you a bit underdressed.”

Daniel leaned in to press a lingering kiss to her cheek. “And they’d consider you _very_ underdressed.”

She had stopped noticing, sometime along the way, whether Daniel saw her with her outfit undone or her hair limp and wet or her makeup rubbed away. But on Christmas… Peggy sighed. Would it have been so much to ask that tip not to come in tonight?

“I’d bought a new dress for dinner, you know,” she grumbled as Daniel’s lips trailed over her jaw. “Mrs. Jarvis said it was perfect.” She tilted her head to let him reach her neck. “I don’t suppose it matters now.”

Daniel paused, his nose brushing her ear. “You’re really hung up on this, aren’t you?”

“It was red.”

He chuckled against her skin. “Wear it tomorrow.”

“I’ve a green one for tomorrow.”

“Peggy.”

“What?”

Daniel drew back with a resigned look. “Go put on the dress.”

She frowned, puzzled. “You’re just going to take it off me again.”

“Now you’re getting the idea.”

Peggy felt a pull at her waist and glanced down. Daniel’s fingers were hooked in the sash of her robe, the tie ready to give. _Ah._ “Or we could skip that step, and I’ll wear the dress tomorrow.”

His brow furrowed as he considered it gravely. “What about the green one?”

“Daniel.”

“What?”

“I will put you back outside.”

-

He might kiss her then, or she might kiss him.

 _Merry Christmas_ , one of them might say, late in the night, or perhaps not until morning.

The details might be hazy, in the end.

-

In the end, well—

In the end, they were together.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The thanks goes, as always, to l0g0phile, for prying herself away from stucky and the others to read about these silly birds.


End file.
